The school, a member of the Ivy League, now legally known as Columbia University in the City of New York, is incorporated under the name Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. The undergraduate schools are Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, known as SEAS. A third undergraduate division, the School of General Studies, is for students who have interrupted their undergraduate studies and want to resume in order to obtain their degree. Columbia College has the third lowest undergraduate acceptance rate in the United States, placing just after Harvard University and Yale University (the ranking is for doctoral universities, as categorized by the Carnegie Foundation and U.S. News & World Report). Columbia is considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the world, as a leader in the sciences, the humanities, law, medicine, education, engineering and business. Shanhai Jiao Tong University World Ranking (2004) (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500(1-100).htm)

Campus

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Butler Library (June 2003)

Due to former university president Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught and free discourse enjoyed by all, most of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morningside Heights--quite an achievement, given the difficulty of finding contiguous real estate in Manhattan, even during the 19th century. This campus was designed by acclaimed architects McKim, Mead, and White and is considered one of their greater successes.

Organizations and athletics

Major publications include the Columbia Daily Spectator (http://www.columbiaspectator.com/), the nation's second oldest student newspaper; CTV (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ctv/), the nation's second oldest student television station; The Fed (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/thefed), an alternative humor paper; the Jester, a now-dormant campus humor magazine established in 1899 and edited at one point by Allen Ginsberg; the Columbia Review, the nation's oldest college literary magazine; the Blue & White, a literary magazine established in 1892; the Collection, an undergraduate literary magazine; and the Journal of Politics & Society, the nation's leading journal of advanced undergraduate research in the social sciences. The annual Varsity Show, once led by Rodgers and Hammerstein, is a student produced musical that lampoons Columbia traditions and students, as well as rival colleges.

1899 Columbia Hockey Team

While Columbia is no longer an athletics powerhouse, sports at Columbia have a long tradition. Crew was Columbia's first sport. The Columbia football team is one of the nation's oldest and won the Rose Bowl in 1934. Its wrestling team is the nation's oldest.

Columbia has been home to some famous athletes - Lou Gehrig played baseball while he was a student at Columbia and Sid Luckman played football. Columbia's fencing team in the late 20th century was one of the nation's most successful, with NCAA team championships in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992 and 1993.

The university's recent noteriety in sports, however, lies with its football team which set an NCAA record of most consecutive football games without a win. After a losing 44 games, it broke the streak by beating Princeton at Columbia's homecoming game in 1988.

Columbia is among the top 20 universities in terms of its number of NCAA Division I varsity sports offerings.

Park Place and Rockefeller Center

In July 1754, Samuel Johnson (1696-1772; not to be confused with his near-contemporary Dr. Johnson, the British lexicographer, 1709-1784) held the first classes in a new school house adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan. There were eight students in the class. In 1767 King's College established the first American medical school to grant the MD degree.

Morningside Heights

In 1896, the trustees officially authorized the use of yet another new name, Columbia University, and today the institution is officially known as "Columbia University in the City of New York." At the same time the campus was moved again from 49th Street to a more spacious campus in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan. The campus, considered to be among the nation's most beautiful and architecturally significant, was designed by the famous architectural firm, McKim, Mead, and White.

View of Columbia University's Low Library Plaza, c1900

During his tenure, President Butler once remarked that Columbia needed to attract more students from out of town because the school was being overrun by Jews. Of course, this is the man of whom it was written:

[A] special fury animated the trustees whenever Professor Beard published still another of his iconoclastic interpretations of American history. On one occasion, a trustee is said to have asked the president of the university, Nicholas Murray Butler, whether he had read Professor Beard's last book. And President Butler is said to have replied, "I hope so." [1] (http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/6.4.98/tenure.html)

It was Butler's predecessor as university president, Seth Low, who moved Columbia out of the area that was to become Rockefeller Center to its present location in Morningside Heights.

In 1902, New York newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer donated a substantial sum to the University for the founding of a school to teach journalism. The result was the 1912 opening of the Graduate School of Journalism-- the only journalism school in the Ivy League. The school remains the nation's most prestigious, and is the administrator of the coveted Pulitzer Prize and the duPont-Columbia Award in broadcast journalism.

Interior of St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University

Columbia Business School was added in the early 20th century. During the first half of the 20th Century Columbia and Harvard were considered the best research universities in the country and had the largest endowments.

Research into the atom by faculty members I. I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi and Polykarp Kusch placed Columbia's Physics Department in the international spotlight in the 1940s after the first nuclear pile was built to start what would become the Manhattan Project. To this day, Columbia University maintains its reputation as a leading research institute in the areas of Physics and Engineering.

In 1893 the Columbia University Press was founded in order to "promote the study of economic, historical, literary, scientific and other subjects; and to promote and encourage the publication of literary works embodying original research in such subjects." Among its most distinguished publications are The Columbia Encyclopedia, first published in 1935, and The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World, first published in 1952.

Student demonstrations

Students protested in 1968 over the issue of whether Columbia would build its gymnasium in neighboring Morningside Park; this was seen by the protestors to be an act of aggression aimed at the black residents of neighboring Harlem. For several days, students took over administration buildings, occupied classrooms, and demonstrate against the Columbia ROTC detatchment. The protests came to a conclusion when the NYPD violently quashed the demonstrations. The episode is generally seen as marking the point where the student body's and administration's values appeared to diverge most sharply. Columbia ended up scrapping the plans for the controversial gym and built a subterranean "Physical Fitness Center" under the north end of campus instead; this is the facility in use today. The architectural plans drawn up for the abandoned Morningside Park gym project were eventually used at Princeton University to build Dillon Gym.

Employment and Land Ownership

Due to its connections with various state agencies and many affiliated institutions along with Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, it is by some estimates, the largest employer in New York City. Taken by itself, without its affiliated institutions, it is at most the third-largest employer (the University's own estimate) and at a minimum, the twelfth-largest. Its status as a large landowner and employer has been established since the late 1950s. Due to the large numbers of employees, along with its pervasive status as a landowner, the University has been viewed by some, particularly in the community that surrounds it, as a corporate entity rather than a not-for-profit educational institution. This in turn has caused a divide between the University and those in the surrounding area, resulting in continued resistance to the University's expansion.

Notable Columbians

Among the Columbians to achieve a measure of fame (or notoriety) are such diverse talents as poets and physicists, artists and lawyers, Founding Fathers, baseball stars and inventors. See the main article for details.

In film, television and the arts

Columbia's New York location and classic architecture has made it a favorite for moviemakers. Particularly photogenic are the Columbia steps, the long series of steps in front of Low Library, as well as the lecture room 309 in Havemeyer Hall. Movies featuring scenes shot on Morningside campus include: